But do not be frightened by conventions, the different materials in which the artist works impose their conventions.  And as it is through these materials that he has to find expression, what expressive qualities they possess must be studied, and those facts in nature selected that are in harmony with them.  The treatment of hair by sculptors is an extreme instance of this.  What are those qualities of hair that are amenable to expression in stone?  Obviously they are few, and confined chiefly to the mass forms in which the hair arranges itself.  The finest sculptors have never attempted more than this, have never lost sight of the fact that it was stone they were working with, and never made any attempt to create an illusion of real hair.  And in the same way, when working in bronze, the fine artist never loses sight of the fact that it is bronze with which he is working.  How sadly the distinguished painter to whom a misguided administration entrusted the work of modelling the British emblem overlooked this, may be seen any day in Trafalgar Square, the lions there possessing none of the splendour of bronze but looking as if they were modelled in dough, and possessing in consequence none of the vital qualities of the lion.  It is interesting to compare them with the little lion Alfred Stevens modelled for the railing of the British Museum, and to speculate on what a thrill we might have received every time we passed Trafalgar Square, had he been entrusted with the work, as he might have been.

And in painting, the great painters never lose sight of the fact that it is paint with which they are expressing themselves.  And although paint is capable of approaching much nearer an actual illusory appearance of nature than stone or bronze, they never push this to the point where you forget that it is paint.  This has been left for some of the smaller men.

And when it comes to drawing, the great artists have always confined themselves to the qualities in nature that the tool they were drawing with was capable of expressing, and no others.  Whether working with pen, pencil, chalk, or charcoal, they always created a convention within which unlimited expression has been possible.

To sum up, academic drawing is all that can be really taught, and is as necessary to the painter as the practising of exercises is to the musician, that his powers of observation and execution may be trained.  But the vital matter of art is not in all this necessary training.  And this fact the student should always keep in mind, and be ever ready to give rein to those natural enthusiasms which, if he is an artist, he will find welling up within him.  The danger is that the absorbing interest in his academic studies may take up his whole attention, to the neglect of the instinctive qualities that he should possess the possession of which alone will entitle him to be an artist.

VII